Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a system and method to provide a service assurance agent to an infrastructure having a common platform capability that supports an application, operating system and/or hypervisor operating on the infrastructure, and more specifically relates to a system and method for implementing the service assurance agent to determine model operating parameters for the system functioning at a predetermined integrity level, thereby making it possible to monitor for exceptions from an operational model. Once any such exceptions are detected, the agent delivers appropriate instructions to the policy function layer for required action, whether it is a resolution of the problem or a mere monitoring and noting of an anomaly from operations at a predetermined integrity level for possible resolution at a later time.
Related Art
Typical computer environments implement computing resources that are part of individual computing hardware in order to service clients. However, with more recent developments of technology in the computer network field, computer environments have also evolved into cloud computing environments. Such systems provide services using available computer resources available over a network without end-use knowledge of physical location and configurations of respective physical computer resources. Such environments also permit a plurality of independent virtual machines, even using single physical computing hardware. These systems can independently run an operating system and applications through virtual machines.
While these virtual computing environments can allocate hardware resources, they often require a hypervisor software program installed in at least physical systems, which essentially controls and manages the operation of applications and operating system through a series of virtual machines. A hypervisor may be referred to as a virtual machine monitor (VMM). A virtual machine may perform file input/output operations through the hypervisor among other functions. A partial or complete simulation of actual hardware permits software to operate unaltered.
Virtual machines also enable the execution of multiple isolated operating system instances on a single physical machine. This increases resource utilization, simplifies administrative tasks, lowers overall power consumption, and enables users to obtain computing resources on demand, but often requires the use of a hypervisor layer which often lies between the virtual machines (VMs) and the physical hardware.
However, with the emergence of such virtualized systems, security concerns for embedded systems have increased. These concerns can range from mere reliability, normal operations, robust execution, and reliable network access to more problematic security issues, such as higher protection from software attackers, including viruses, and other fraudulent attackers.